[Ed: This post will make much more sense to you if you've ever worked for a large, inflexible corporation or hierarchal entity in which a bunch of incompetent, juvenile, clannish doods get to ruin everything, blame you for it, make you do all the work, and take all the credit when things do go right. But it's honestly not meant to be bitter retaliation about anything specifically personal or recent; I'm truly glad not to be part of that world anymore and I'm just waxing meta.] Read below the fold...
I'm out in the garden today and so I don't really have time to get into this. But if true I'd be unsurprised. It reminds me of bad Clancy novels, or something. Anyway, via Avedon, haxxorwarz:
Last week, VR interviewed GOP Cyber security expert Stephen Spoonamore about the upcoming election and his testimony in the new Ohio litigation to take depositions of Karl Rove and others.
Still seeking to answer the question "Who's going after Charlie Rangel," I found this Washington Post article whose coverage agrees well with most of my carefully-assembled timeline. Glad to see someone's on the story, even if I think they stop before asking the most important question.
From the article (and to fill in those who haven't been following the story):
Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), 78, addressing two visitors in his office near the House chamber, says he won't cave in to Republicans and other critics who demand that he step aside as chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee until the ethics cloud surrounding him clears.
Democratic voters in at least two Wisconsin communities have received absentee voter forms from the McCain campaign that -- if used -- could cause their votes to be ignored.
Is it a simple error? Or campaign shenanigans and voter fraud? You be the judge.
This post is largely an attempted response in the form of a summation to the long comment thread Lambert"s "Roubini" post of yesterday continues to produce. I have used so many tags because this crisis is the sum total of all the Bush/Republican/Rightwing shit we've lived through for the past eight years, and the similar shit stretching back to Nixon and Reagan. Read below the fold...
Democrats shot down a second GOP attempt in as many months to punish Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) for a series of alleged ethics violations.
Democrats easily tabled a motion House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) offered that was aimed at forcing Rangel to give up his chairmanship of the powerful Ways and Means Committee while the ethics committee investigates the charges. It also would have ordered the ethics committee to establish an investigative subcommittee to look into the matter. The motion went down, 226-176, with only the five Democrats on the ethics panel voting “present” and eight Democrats not voting.
Now here's the GOP I've come to know and loathe. After that recycled Alan Keyes bullshit I was worried that this country had fallen so far that the GOP couldn't even manufacture a decent smear campaign. But I see now that other GOP fundamentals remain strong:
The chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County Michigan, a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election as part of the state GOP’s effort to challenge some voters on Election Day.
So it's been bothering me for a long time now: what is it going to take? This country has tolerated the travesty that is the "Drug War" for decades; ok, I grok that as it's "only" brown and black and poor people who suffer AIDS and rape and death as a result of imprisonment. This country has also come to sleep in and miss the fact that we're bombing/shooting/raping/killing brown non-xtians in a war of choice; again, I sort of understand as that war is far away and not often on teevee, from which most people construct their 'reality.' Obama, unlike MLK, felt the need to surround himself with 000s of "security" folk in a mass grouping of fellow democracts; I guess that's a statement on how far we've (not) come since the glory days of the Civil Rights movement. But St. Paul? MN? Some of you do/have lived there; you must know how gentle and "neighborly" most of MN really is, and how infrequently it's upset by security theatre. Amy Goodman got arrested. I guess that's not surprising or worthy news to most people. But gosh, I really do wonder what it will take. Armed camps? Mass arrest of suburbanites? Shooting xtian babies and their moms?
Wake up America. Or rather, how do we wake up America? That whole logic of "I was not a [x], so I didn't speak up when they came for [x]" is starting to seem like so much more than distant memory. Is it just me? Video (one of many from the links)
I hope you can forgive me, despite my undeserving nature, for some unspecific and overly personal posting of late. I'm going to try to correct that, and here I'll start.
Resolved: Palin was a hit out of the park sort of choice for McCain and his team.
Why do I say this? I have many reasons, and I'm perversely glad and disturbed by his choice. Lemme share some reasons and links which may help you understand. Read below the fold...
One outcome is completely unacceptable, and especially dangerous, for America.
I still have problems with Obama, but from here on I will work and write to illuminate issues that I want President Obama to address-- and call him out when he fails to deliver.
As long as the criticisms-- and praise-- remain issue-oriented, Corrente can serve as a successful antidote to the now discredited, formerly progressive sites (you know who you are) that will no doubt continue to disappoint us in their analysis and commentary. Read below the fold...
